


Painkillers

by Bagheera



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 09:55:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/938579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bagheera/pseuds/Bagheera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the AU from the Big Finish story "Sympathy for the Devil" in which the Master (played by Mark Gatiss) is stuck on Earth for several decades. In this story he ends up working with UNIT in 1999, although he likes it rather less than the Third Doctor did. Colonel Wood (played by David Tennant in the audio) is no Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart either, which is probably why they end up getting drunk and breaching protocol.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painkillers

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not British, not even a native speaker of English, so my attempts at Wood's idiom are probably pathetic and terrible. Sorry. Also, this is a weird pairing, but I have to admit, I always wanted to write more of it than this little story, mostly because I find this Master really interesting. Never did, though.

Cold white walls, and lights so bright they seemed to sting in his eyes. Machines that hummed all day, a low, grating sound that pooled inside his skull like a big heavy ball of noise. The red, blinking eye of a security camera above the door. And the constant flickering of computer screens with their UNIT screensavers gliding across the black of energy saving mode. The Master let the door fall shut behind him, a muted sound. No disturbances in the laboratory. UNIT's pet scientist needed his quiet.

He was never sure if he should hate this place or be grateful for it. There were worse places to be on earth, and he'd been in nearly all of them. There were worse masters to serve than UNIT, bigger bastards to yank his chain. In relative terms, this was heaven.

In absolute terms, it didn't bear thinking about.

The door was thrown open, and hit him square in the back. "Oi," the Colonel's less than melodic voice exclaimed. "Don't you have a better place to stand around?"

The Master turned around with a sigh. His back hurt and he was tired. Could there really be another crisis already? "How can I help you this time?"

Brimmingcombe-Wood, scrawny though he looked in his uniform, always seemed to be spoiling for a fight, like a terrier ready to tear apart some rats. What he didn't have in looks and stature (thin as a reed and rather pleasant on the eyes) he made up for with a nasty temperament. Judging from his squint, he was probably wondering whether to punch his scientific advisor, yell at him or let the insolence slip. He settled on a grunted, "Thought you'd be over the hills by now."

"I'm afraid I haven't got around to it yet."

"Good. Turns out the other space bloke wasn't too keen on replacing you. High-tailed it as soon as he'd collected Stewart again."

"Did he." Affecting a blank, uncaring tone was surprisingly easy. The Master turned away, slipping off his black gloves. "Well, don't worry your pretty head off. I'll be around for the foreseeable time. And I don't think we've seen the last of him either."

"Worry my – don't you take that tone with me," Wood snarled and raised his hand – the Master braced himself for a punch, but all he got was a slap on the shoulder. Wood grabbed him and turned him back around towards the door. It was the companionable sort of manhandling. "And you're not lurking around up here tonight."

"Aren't I?"

"No. Pub. Fifth victory over alien bastards in a row. It's better than UNIT's done in thirty years." The lights in the corridor went out one by one as they walked out, and in the last of them, Wood's grin flashed brightly. "At the moment, they're so grateful upstairs that they'll even look past you blowing up the London Eye in the process."

*  
They rode in one of UNIT's sturdy black Defenders. Wood had a habit of wrecking his own cars on a regular basis. His driving occasionally had the Master gripping his seat in barely masked terror. Tonight the streets were still jammed and Wood's speeding was modest. The Master counted himself lucky. The day hadn't gone well, but he still had no desire to die, even if living meant that he'd be forced to indulge Wood's rare moment of feeling social.

Streets went whizzing by, small, human, insignificant, dusty in the summer heat. There was a strange mixture of fear and relief on the faces of the passing Londoners. They almost seemed to prefer alien invaders to their own squalid wars and terrorism. Thirty years ago, when the Nestene had nearly conquered earth, the Master wouldn't have given humanity another month to live. But he knew better, of course. Ten thousand years from now, the saying would go that even when the cockroaches bowed out, humans would still be around to witness the end of the universe.

"What are you looking so glum about," Wood asked as they had to stop at a traffic light to let them all pass: tottery old women with walking sticks, dragging their groceries home, young women with prams, little girls hop-skipping across the road.

"Cockroaches," the Master muttered softly. Wood merely grunted.

*

On the one hand, the Chinese had injected him with a chip to track him everywhere he went, like a common mongrel. It had been a pain to get out before he deserted. On the other hand, the Chinese hadn't expected him to socialize with a dozen drunk British soldiers in a noisy place rank with the smell of smoke and beer. The very sight of a pub made the Master grind his teeth ever since the Doctor had tricked him in Hong Kong.

The soldiers, red-faced and shouting, raised their glasses again and again to toast their own victory. The Master wondered what Wood's superiors would think of this – it was a security breach waiting to happen. But the Colonel seemed happy enough to get drunk with his men.

Sergeant Bell, a broad-faced young man who had been grazed by a Slitheen energy weapon today and should by all means be lying in a hospital bed, not out carousing with everybody else, got to his feet, leaning heavily on the table and raised his glass. "To the man of the day!"

"Who's he then, Bell?" someone slurred, and Wood leaned forward on his elbows, waving his pint at Bell, "If it's Stewart or that arrogant space friend of his, you're out of my pub."

Wood's dislike for the Doctor was unwavering, and hadn't been cooled down by today's events. The Master could see why: the Doctor criticising UNIT's methods and performance while doing nothing to help hadn't endeared him to anyone. But Wood's resentment lay rooted in the events in Hong Kong, where the Doctor and Lethbridge-Stewart had run off leaving UNIT with a terrible mess at hand.

But Sergeant Bell just laughed, spilled a bit of his beer and proclaimed, "I'm talking about our very own spaceman! To the smartest egghead ever to wear a Union Jack on his breast!"

Brooding over his glass of single malt, the Master was startled by the sudden attention of everyone at the table, laughing and raising their glasses. I'd kill every one of you in a heartsbeat if it'd get me off this planet, he thought and managed a mocking smile in recognition of the toast. He stroked his tie absently and downed his whiskey in one gulp.

*

The Master didn't know why he was still sitting at the bar. Lethargy, he supposed. It sounded nicer than resignation. Wood came staggering over from the dart board to slouch on a bar stool next to him. The Master had so far managed to repel anyone from sitting there by sheer force of negative thoughts. Possibly some low level hypnotism was also involved, but Wood was irritatingly immune against any such subtle means.

"Still crying into your drink?" the Colonel asked. "Not that it's any of my business, but he's not worth it."

"Who?"

"That Doctor bloke. What's the story between him and you, anyway? Was he your boyfriend?" Wood's blunt tone suggested that he couldn't care less, but the Master wasn't fooled that easily. Wood was by no means what you'd call kind or caring or friendly, but forming attachments over time was a typical human weakness.

"By your limited human understanding?" the Master replied. "No."

"Ah." Wood's face brightened into a sudden dirty leer. "You're not his type. Won't give you the time of day."

The Master sent a look in the human's direction that would have made Wood blanch if he hadn't been too drunk to appreciate it. "Colonel, I suggest for your own health that you find another topic of conversation."

"Touchy." Wood smirked. He pulled over the Master's glass to swirl the golden whiskey at its bottom. It seemed to distract him for quite a while. Long enough to make the Master notice that the brash Colonel had girlish lashes, and that his hair hadn't been cut in too long a time. He'd bedded a number of humans during his years on this planet, but somehow he'd never quite looked at them long enough to notice such things. Wood's next question caught the Master unprepared. It was smarter than he usually gave the Colonel credit for.

"You asked him to take you with him again, didn't you?"

Gazing at his blurry reflection in the curved surface of the beer tap, the Master gave it a weary smile. It had been humiliating, facing the Doctor again while doing his job for a bunch of humans. He had felt like clown, a parody of the Doctor. Even his clothes were just the Doctor's style: charcoal suit worn with trainers, black leather gloves and a Union Jack tie.

"Yes," the Master said bitterly. "I did."

Wood punched him in the shoulder, not entirely in a friendly way. "Treacherous bastard."

The Master laughed mirthlessly. "Always."

*  
Wood was drunk. Not quite as drunk as he appeared to be, but drunk enough to speak far too loudly of top secret things. Only the noise the lower ranks made at the neighbouring table saved him from spilling state secrets to the general public.

"That shit you did with the London Eye wasn't necessary at all, was it?" Wood presently demanded to know.

"Well, seeing as your planet is headed towards a climate collapse, and the thing was wasting incredible amounts of energy –"

Wood broke into barking laughter. "Climate collapse, yeah. You did it for fun. Probably were having a laugh at us while we were busy getting out all the civilians."

The Master gave him a once-over, and looked rather pointedly at Wood's empty glass. "I don't think you're quite sober enough to deliver any lectures on morals tonight. Or," he leaned closer and fished the car key out of the inside of Wood's jacket, "drive."

"Lectures?" Wood sounded astonished. His hand, though, not nearly as innocent as his tone, had crept onto the Master's knee. "It was brilliant! Best lightshow I've ever seen."

The Master allowed himself a soft laugh. "Never let it be said that you don't have an appreciation for the finer things in life."

It was a small favour to the human that he pushed off Wood's hand at this point.. It wouldn't do for Wood to be seen fondling their scientific advisor cum political prisoner in front of the men.  
*

In the beginning Wood had usually started his advances with a punch in the gut, which the Master had accepted as the perils of playing rough with cavemen. Wood was scared of him, scared of the challenge to his authority, and he needed to assert it first, even though they both knew that the Master only laughed at physical violence. These days, they usually managed with just a couple of insults before Wood shoved him against a wall or whatever other uncomfortable surface was available.

The hood of a UNIT land rover was a criminally dangerous spot – out in the open and parked far too close to the pub. But the Defender's metal was sturdy, and didn't dent beneath the Master's back and no alarm went off when Wood slammed him down on it. The Master laughed, unrestrained for the first time this evening. "My back's going to feel that all week," he complained.

"Not just your back," Wood promised, and made short work of the Master belt and trousers. Not quite as drunk then – just a ruse to get out of the pub early.

The Master just sneered in reply, which he knew would have the desired effect eventually – first, though, it earned him a vicious punch across the face. Blood on his lips and his vision swimming, and above him he heard Wood spit into his hand.

You're doing pretty well, the Doctor had said. I think Earth is doing you good.

He hadn't been able to answer the Doctor, had lacked the breath, the words, to articulate what earth had done to him. Now the Master would have liked to scream out his reply, but the stars weren't listening. He didn't kid himself that the Doctor kept tabs on him.

With that thought, the Master hooked his legs around Wood's skinny hips and bit back a groan as the Colonel shoved himself in with a grunt. The first couple of thrusts came aimlessly and painful, but then Wood leaned over him and fell into a slow, hard rhythm, and the Master reached up with one hand to bury his fingers in Wood's uniform, holding on tightly. He didn't make a sound, just lay back, eyes wide open, and stared at the stars up above, cold and far away in the black sky.

I'll look in on you from time to time, the Doctor had promised before he left. He'd forget again, distracted by shinier things. A butterfly mind, beautiful, fleeting and worthless.

One day the Master would kill him. A slow, hard death. A thirty year death.

Wood unexpectedly grabbed the Master's tie, yanking him back to reality. The Colonel curled the silk around his hand until the Master choked. "Tell me," Wood panted, grinning and slamming in hard. "Who's in charge?"

The Master raised up his hips, meeting the next thrust, his eyes rolling back in ecstasy as he grinned back. "I am," he gasped, and if they had had the breath for it, they would both have laughed.

*

"Fag?"

The Master took the offered cigarette. He spared a mournful thought on the Cuban cigars he had shared with the richest and most depraved of the world. There had been good times, too, good years when he had been in favour of someone powerful and indulgent, when he had slept with a politician's wife or impressed some upstart religious leader. Wood wasn't powerful, and he wouldn't ever be. He only had filter cigarettes to offer, and a cheap red plastic lighter. Curled up in the corner of his seat, against door of the car, he looked terribly young. The Master had secured the driver's seat for himself. Life on earth was miserable, but he wasn't planning to die in a fiery car crash because of Wood's drunk driving. At the moment, though, they weren't going anywhere. Shifting delicately in his seat, the Master took a long drag from his cigarette.

"Thirty damn years," Wood drawled, with something like awe in his voice.

Cigarette smoke filled the inside of the car, pooling under the ceiling and drifting away out of the windows. The Master felt tired and worn-out. Thirty long years in which he hadn't had so much as the Doctor's promise, and yet he'd never once stopped believing that the Doctor would come. Hope permeated everything, poisonous, addictive, stale and clinging as cigarette smoke. And he still believed in revenge. One day he and the Doctor would meet again.

"Thirty years, and you didn't manage to flag a ride from any passing flying saucers," Wood went on. "You know what I think?"

Against his nature, the Master hoped that the Colonel wouldn't say anything that the Master would have to kill him for. He had grown rather fond of the man. "I can't imagine."

Wood flashed him a grin. "I think you've got some damn rotten luck."


End file.
